Oh Christmas Tree...

Oh Christmas tree, something something something something!

Does anyone actually know the rest of the words to that Christmas tree carol?

Anyway, ours is up!

Let the silly season commence!

Writing

For a few weeks now Coen has only drawn one kind of animal. If anyone would like a picture of an octopus let me know, he'll draw you one in your favourite colour! To encourage a bit of variety I had a go at showing him how to write his name. He picked it up very quickly!

Jen

Unsuccessful Christmas Shopping

The new DFO at South Wharf is super! We went to check it out and get some tops for Dags for summer and some Christmas presents for the 5 thousand children we're buying for this year. Seriously people, this breeding is getting out of hand!

In the new DFO there is a Mimco outlet. Usually Mimco is way out of my price range, light years out of my price range, and to be honest most of the stuff in the outlet was still a bit pricey. However the wallets were really quite reasonable, and coincidentally I was in need of a new wallet, purse, anything that didn't pop open at inconvenient moments and spill my cash out onto the foot path! There was one in particular that caught my eye. I love it!


Incidentally, we didn't end up doing any Christmas shopping. I'm usually done by November, but this year I keep getting distracted by shiny pretty things!

Jen

A Taste of Things to Come

We're finally starting to get something edible from our little veggie patch! We've been flush with broccolini for a week now and this morning while we were watering, Coen and I noticed that some of our snow peas are ready!

Our little 4 square patch has been an education! We lost half our sweet corn to frost when they were tiny, but the rest (up the back) is getting tall fast! It looked like we lost our eggplants too, but I fed the little sticks and kept watering them and now they've sprouted leaves again, I hope they make it, I love eggplant! I need to spread out the leeks a bit more, I noticed that mum's had more space and were much bigger and they came from the same seedlings (a little bit of garden envy!). We've also got onions on the go and lots of different coloured capsicums which would be doing better if Riley would stop running over them.

Tonight's stir fry!

Jen

A Different Way of Looking at Things

One of the great things about travelling is that you always have your camera handy to snap every pretty thing you see.

One of my favourite things about having the camera handy is that it changes the way I look at things.

I look at things more closely,

and from a different angle,

and notice things that I would not have otherwise seen.

Jen

To What?

Livestock... the wind... imaginary vehicles travelling on an imaginary road?

Adventures in Tasmania

I am a super slack blogger! Rather than a catch up, lets just go with most recent happenings and I'll try to be a better blogger from now on... I promise...

Tasmania. We just got back from a wonderful week in Tasmania. I was a little worried about how Coen would behave while we were waiting in airports and flying in planes. I really didn't want him to be one of those annoying shouting, whingeing, horror kids because that has a tendency to turn me into one of those horrid shrieking, nagging mothers. It turns out my fears were unfounded. Aside from a couple of fatigue induced whinges he was wonderful!

He managed to keep himself (and us) entertained!

We stayed just outside Launceston in a great little unit.
On our first day we checked out the museum. Free, and awesome! Coen did some scientific experiments on viscosity and we played with the whisper dishes.

They had a fantastic dinosaur exhibit!


At Tasmania Zoo they have goats, bowls of goats


with freaky robot goat eyes that try to get through the fence to steal your soul!!! I have goat issues alright.

Of course they also have the all important and exceptionally cute devils.



We went on a cruise up the gorge, some of the houses perched on the hillside are just stunning!


We rode the chairlift over the First Basin,


then we walked back down again, stopping on the way to chat to a skink.



We took a drive in the hills and visited Tasmazia...

Turns out Coen's not the king.


Across the road form our unit we noticed there was a big old house. It turned out to be Entally House which was built by Thomas Reiby. Grab a $20 note, that's Thomas' mum Mary, a horse thief and convict turned shipping magnate.


The house and grounds are beautiful, I could have spent hours wandering around.



At Beauty Point there is a place called Platypus House. If you're ever in the area, go there!


You can get up really close to the platypuses, see them frolicking and eating giant worms and yabbies!

You can get even closer to the echidnas,


close enough to get echidna spit on your chucks!

Everywhere we went Coen managed to pick up another toy animal. Here he is with one day's haul!
We had a wonderful trip, ate way too much, came home and went straight to the gym!

Jen